


By The Sea

by Tortellini



Series: JeanMarco Month 2k17 [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Best Friends, Bitterness, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Childhood Friends, Developing Friendships, French-Speaking Jean Kirstein, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Interspecies, Interspecies Awkwardness, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Jeanmarco Month, Late 1800s/Mid 1900s, M/M, Male Friendship, Marco Bott & Ymir Are Related, Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein-centric, Minor Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss/Ymir, POV Jean Kirstein, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prompt Fic, Romantic Friendship, Sasha Blouse & Jean Kirstein Are Related, Wordcount: 500-1.000, ambiguous time period, sailboats, sailors, ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 04:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11154708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tortellini/pseuds/Tortellini
Summary: JeanMarco Month, Day 3 (June 9): Generator(Merpeople AU) As a child, Jean Kirschtein meets a strange boy by the sea. They are fascinated with each other. But sadly, life finds a way of getting in the way of things.Oneshot





	By The Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Jean and merboy!Marco are children and best friends, and they don't know if they're dating or not (but they both want to be, secretly).

If he told anyone what he'd seen they'd have accused him of drinking. Later in life that would've probably have been true; but Jean Kirschtein had been only seven or eight, a little bastard. Hardly even old enough to work on the docks by himself then. 

No, what he'd seen had been real. 

The boy who had come to visit him was not like any other, to put it simply. Sometimes there was an older girl with him--Jean felt weird the first time he saw her, but then he realized they had the same olive skin, same freckles. (And the feeling only came because he wanted to keep his friend to himself! ...right?). Besides, the girl usually came with a blonde girl Jean didn't know. She must've been from a different town or something; though definitely a person. 

Anyway. His name had been Marco, and he'd come from down under. Not like hell or something; Jean had been raised in a god-fearing home, he wouldn't have allowed himself to talk to a demon. His mother would've had a heart attack, to begin with. No, Marco meant the ocean. But was that any better? 

How? I mean, really--how? No one can breathe underwater. That's not how lungs work. Even as a kid, Jean could understand that. It had to be some sort of trick or something. 

But there were odd things. Marco never, and I mean never, got out of the water. He also asked odd questions. For example: what was school? Sunday service? What were boats? Why did people use boats? Why did people kill and eat fish? 

What was walking like? 

Jean was confused, to say the least, but he answered the questions the best he could. Marco was patient. Much more so than Jean himself.

He didn't know how many years he knew him for. It was the weirdest friendship Jean had ever had. But one day, Marco had come to the docks, looking solemn. They weren't little children anymore; both of them had filled out. Marco never wore a shirt. And these days Jean had found it hard not to stare at his...er, his chest. The lightly curled hair on it, the pale pink of his nipples--

"Jean." Marco had said. "I'm engaged." 

Jean wasn't a freak or something. He knew that there was something wrong with Marco. There had to be! That was the only explanation. 

That was the last time they saw each other. Jean soon joined the navy after that. 

>  

Jean finished telling the story just then, and he leaned back in his arm chair. He was an old man by now: grizzled, scars from a war he fought, on first the sea and then the land. He hadn't moved away from his sea though. That was grey and cold, smelled of fish and ale and rain. It was home. 

His granddaughter Sasha looked up at him in awe. She was a little thing, plucky--always seemed to be hungry, so he fed her extra when he could. She had a mouth on her to talk too. But amazingly, she hadn't interrupted him even once during all this time. 

Finally though, when he was done, she spoke. Her voice wasn't brash or joking, but more like the lady he'd chided her to be. It wasn't what he wanted to hear though. Not this time. 

"Did you love him, Grandfather?" 

Jean pursed his lips. Did it matter, if he admitted it to a child? It was about time he'd admitted it to himself anyway. 

"Yes," he said finally. "I think I did." 


End file.
